Miscellaneous

Amazon-Google cloud price war heats up

The cloud pricing wars are heating up, and today it's Google -- again -- putting on the pressure.

The search giant, which has been growing its rentable cloud offerings, today said in a blog post that it's lowering cloud pricing by an additional 10 percent on top of the over 20 percent cut it unveiled earlier this week. In case math is a little tough for any of you, that brings the total price reduction to over 30 percent. Not too shabby.

What could have motivated the additional cut today? Could a 24 percent to 27 percent price … Read more

Cautious plug for BlackBerry 10 boosts RIM shares

RIM's stock climbed today in reaction to some rare positive news.

Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski increased her rating on RIM stock to "Buy" from "Neutral" today after saying that there's a "30 percent chance" the company's BlackBerry 10 smartphones will be successful, the Associated Press reported.

A one-in-three chance isn't all that much to cheer about, but Jankowski's opinion and "Buy" rating were enough to send the stock up more than 6 percent since the start of today's trading.

Goldman Sachs upped its 12-month price … Read more

C Spire launches shared data plans December 3

Following Verizon and AT&T, regional carrier C Spire will soon let customers share a pool of data among multiple devices.

C Spire's shared data plan follows Verizon's model of charging a fee for devices to access the data allotment, in addition to a monthly charge for the data itself. Up to 10 devices can draw from the data pool.

$20: Tablets, USB modems, and other connected devices $30: Feature phones $40: Smartphones

Data ranges from 1GB for $50 to 20GB for $150, and up. C Spire also lets customers top up their data as the month … Read more

GE wants to plug in the 'Industrial Internet'

American conglomerate General Electric believes machine-to-machine, or "M2M" for short, advances will fundamentally alter the way business operates.

This morning at its "Minds and Machines" conference in San Francisco GE took the wraps off a new suite of "Industrial Internet" (PDF) technologies and services that it says will help airline, railroad, healthcare, manufacturing and energy companies increase productivity and reduce costs -- $150 billion in waste, it claims.

All this, just by connecting industrial machinery to the Internet (and the people that use it).

The quick and dirty of the announcement:

Who: GE, pitching … Read more

Swedish town introduces light therapy to bus shelters

In Umea, Sweden, the forecast for Thursday is partly cloudy with a 10 percent chance of precipitation and a high of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. As I write this in dark and damp Portland, Ore., Umea doesn't sound so bad.

But the city, located some 400 miles north of the already northern Swedish capital Stockholm, is for most of the day this time of year cloaked in darkness, with the sun rising at almost 9 a.m. and setting just after 2 p.m.

So the local energy company Umea Energi has begun installing phototherapy lamps in 30 bus shelters … Read more

Amazon Web Services slices S3 prices

Amazon Web Services will cut S3 prices by roughly 24 percent to 27 percent across all regions in a move that illustrates the cloud provider's ability to add economies of scale to its IT infrastructure.

"We're lowering prices for S3 by 24 percent to 27 percent in all regions," said Andy Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services.

The price cuts are one data point highlighting how AWS intends to disrupt "old-guard technology companies."

Jassy made the comments at Amazon Web Services' inaugural re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. The powwow was designed … Read more

Rumor Has It: Will Disney force the return of a Jedi?

This week, Xbox rumors are back, making Karyne hyperventilate; Google might release its own Chromebook by the end of the year; and we have a very bad feeling about these "Star Wars" rumors.

As you know, Disney purchased Lucasfilm recently, giving it the rights to the "Star Wars" franchise. (On a side note, George Lucas took all the profit from the sale and donated it to charity to improve American public education. Seriously, he is the greatest American alive.) But fans everywhere are letting their imaginations run wild, worrying about what Disney will do to the … Read more

Bike parts get artists' imaginations in gear

You know that greasy bike chain sitting in the corner of your garage? Take a look at the below gallery of original art made from bicycle components, and you might think twice about getting rid of it.

Chicago-based bike parts company SRAM gave a group of handpicked artists a box each of 100 high-performance bicycle components and told them to craft something amazing. They responded with everything from a bike-centric interpretation of Vincent van Gogh's famous "Starry Night" to a robotic ostrich, a crawling "Sramantis," and your typical Mary Jane-wearing bike chain quadruped with a plastic baby head. … Read more

Yahoo's Mayer keeps focus on 'huge opportunity' in mobile

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer last night spoke before an invite-only crowd at Fortune's Most Powerful Women event. And although she offered up some details during her interview, she sidestepped any opportunity to fully outline her company's plans.

Not surprisingly, Mayer focused much of her discussion on mobile. The mobile market is growing rapidly, and shareholders are responding favorably to Mayer's claims that the space is integral to Yahoo's future growth. At a recent earnings call, Mayer spent a generous amount of time discussing mobile and why she believes Yahoo is well-positioned to capitalize. She did it … Read more